Sales v Marketing

[Michele King]

Do your sales and marketing departments work in collaboration to develop its marketing strategy? I believe that there is a divide between sales v marketing and I hope to work towards an integrated process in order for the marekting strategy to drive sales. I am interested in hearing your ideas...

[Chris Lindauer]

Great question Michele...valid question to be sure. When I had a premium seating sales focus with the Blazers, we were pretty lucky to have the support of the marketing folks. I think the recognition needs to be there that premium seating, suites etc. have the potential to maximize revenues for the organization. If not, you'll be fighting an uphill battle for a long time.

One suggestion might be to facilitate some open dialogue about your frustration and perhaps include the marketing folks in the actual sales process. Let them know what types of challenges you're facing and communicate to them how important their participation is in the process. Stress how much you need them to help overcome some of the hurdles typically associated with selling premium seating. Ultimately, if you can make them feel good about the positive impact they can have on sales, perhaps you'll see a shift in momentum.

Probably not the greatest advice ever but thought I'd weigh in...

Good luck!

- Chris

[Steve Gelinas]

I agree with you in most companies they do not work together to drive sales. Just this week sales and marketing just discussed about meeting everyday for about 15 - 20 minutes to brainstorm and then plan the marketing strategy to its end. Today we got together and really narrowed down who wwe wanted to contact and how. So we will both go back and put that together then meet again tomorrow for the next plan of action and so on. This effective because with multiple people ideas fly around really quick and expectations and wants are accomplished at the same time as well. It may seem like a lot but without this quick communication daily this time can be wasted judt as easily by not having the same expectations for the final outcome.

[Kris Gotsch]

Agree with the other posts here that getting sales and marketing together in one room or in regular discussions is key. Michelle, you also mention an "integrated process" which from my experience is the most essential thing to get marketing and sales to work together - this integrated process should lead to definitions of common goals and measures (potentially this is a shared subset of the overall goals for each department). Aim should be to get to a true "closed loop marketing" strategy which ensures that marketing and sales department do not work in silos and that the marketing strategy actually drives sales.....there is quite some information available out there - also in relation to how to practically doing this. If you are interested, I'll be happy to share some "best practices" I have gathered and experienced, which do not only apply to the sports industry but to businesses overall.